Reply to Consensus world view of TOP 5/6 UK University Rankings (Prestige/Research)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Interesting Thread. We have a Junior that is adamant about going abroad.

Outside of Oxbridge/LSE or Imperial, how the next level of UK universities compare to US universities? I’m not asking about Job Prospects. Just a comparison of pedigrees in since this always the topic around DCUM.

What are the US universities that would group well with each of these?

UCL
Kings
Edinburgh
St Andrews[/quote]

Based on QS rankings:

UCL - in between  Caltech and Penn/Berkeley
Edinburgh - in between  Yale and Columbia
Kings - in between Columbia and UCLA/NYU/Michigan

based on Times Higher Education:

UCL - around Cornell/Michigan/Columbia/UCLA
Edinburgh - around Duke/Nothwestern/NYU
Kings - around UCSD and ahead of Brown/UT etc

Based on US News:

UCL right by Columbia and Yale
Kinds and Edinburgh about tied and right by NYU

Based on # of Nobel Prize Winners according to Aron Frishberg website:

UCL - 24 (around Penn and Washington U)
Edinburgh - 20 (around NYU, UCSD and ahead of UCLA and Michigan
Kings - 11 (around Duke and USC)
St Andrews - 3 (around Missouri/Pitt and FLorida)

St Andrews doesnt do well in World Rankings as these are usually weighted towards research output and quality of research and not so much on undergraduate teaching.

But you can clearly see based on a variety of sources, the equivalent universities….[/quote]

I think this would be correct within the UK, as in how these universities are perceived in a relative sense. In other words, Oxford/Cambridge are sort of the HYP of the UK, and LSE is a Penn/Chicago, Imperial an MIT, and so on.

But in terms of actual comparison with US universities, I’m not sure I would put UCL, Edinburgh, Kings, etc as high as the list above. UCL is maybe a T30, Edinburgh and Kings T50s. Or maybe you could make an argument of all as T30s, it isn’t exact. But aside from research output, I would put these schools a bit lower than their QS or THE rankings.[/quote]

I disagree as it relates to UCL, Edinburgh and Kings. There is a reason every major world ranking that takes into account research ranks them that highly (even the American biased USNWR rankings say so)…….You cant discount research and quality of research  and just say “well…I think it is more like T50”. There is a reason research at these places are done at the top level…..Better universities bring better funding and more qualified professors, in turn they produce more research, which in turn brings in more funding, which in turn bring in better students, which in turn ……... It is a cycle that has been going on forever….you can discount an amazing research output of a school that has produced 20 Nobel Prize Winners and say “nah…I dont agree….it is all irrelevant…….they are at the same level of VT or FSU”.   Cmon…

[/quote]

Well, I didn’t say half these things for one.

But no, you can’t just look at rankings and make this assessment. Sorry, except for maybe a handful of subjects, King’s is not at the same level as a Columbia or a Brown, Edinburgh not at the same level as Yale, Duke, or Northwestern (all cited in the previous response). They are good schools but most people would not put them in a group that high, including on reputation, resources, academic support, job placement, grad school placement, quality of individual academic departments, etc. UCL is probably the one the comes closest to cracking the top rung, but still probably more toward the bottom of that rung than the top.[/quote]

Ok then. Let’s trust “most people” (that you know) vs a dozen of so international rankings including our own US News rankings of global universities…I’m the biggest critic of rankings, but when you have  rankings from a dozen different countries saying something similar there must be something there……so lets agree to disagree….[/quote]Agree we will disagree. I can’t take seriously a ranking that puts Tsinghua University ahead of Chicago and Princeton (QS), or Fudan University at the same level as King’s (an insult to King’s) or Karolinska Institute ahead of LSE (both THE).

That’s not to say King’s or Edinburgh are bad universities—on the contrary, they are quite good. But you seem to be arguing that there is no limit to how high they can be considered, and on that we will definitely agree to disagree.[/quote]I can’t tell, is your argument nationalist or straight racist?[/quote]

Neither, those schools just aren’t as good. Sorry. There are plenty of great schools in Asia but those aren’t it and they aren’t at that high of a level.

But definitely call anyone you disagree with nationalist or racist! Very normal, reasoned behavior.[/quote]

What do u know about Tsinghua University mr know it all? The ridiculous american bias coming from your comments are ridiculous.
Tsinghua University‘S acceptance rate is less than 1%…. Xi Jinping, Hu Jintao and Chen Jining would have disagreed w you…

[b]You basically saying that the 2nd largest economy in the world and its best university cant possibly compete with our best here???  
Either you are  typical uniformed american  or you live with your head buried in the sand….. u might want to get out some more….[/b][/quote]

Funny response but you make a good point….hard to argue that countries with advanced technologies and an economy like China that will likely surpass ours in the future do not have god universities that compete with ours at the highest level. Specially on STEM fields. That is a ludicrous argument.[/quote]

It's just a few short decades ago that China killed or "re-educated" all of its scholars.  Then it took another few decades before kids could leave China and attend higher education in other countries.  They now have a high number of PhD students in the west, who can bring technologies back to China (not to mention corporate espionage).  Sure, maybe they have professors who attended university in the west in the 90s and 00s as professors, but the country doesn't have a long, uninterrupted history of top scholarship.  Engineering = trade school.  Acceptance rate has to do with lots of kids applying to few options.  That's just history, not racism. [/quote]

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